Strange
Day

George Bush is a twinkie.
I can’t think of a better word. I tried watching his speech this time (don’t call it a press conference). But I can only stand so much rhetoric and campaigning. (Managed to get in everything from Palestinian statehood to the Ballistic Missile Ban. And I just know someone is going to slam him tommorrow for his comment about “my country”. (Coulda sworn we all lived here, Dubbya).
Damnit. My building is on fire again. It wouldn’t be a new month if the fire trucks didn’t park outside. It might be less disturbing if they actually rang the fire alarm.
Judging from the news, I’d think we were it. Attacks on America. Terrorist networks and anti-terrorist partnerships. Occasionally an attack in Isreal/Palestine. But it seems others are just as good at acting like animals.

This boy wants to kill you.
Or so I’m told, by the talking heads.
He really didn’t look too imposing shivering on the sidewalk, way too early in the morning to be radical.
I’m not sure how many people that showed up have even finished puberty yet. They carried drums and banners and wore rags and scarfs covering their faces.
Going to a rally, and concealing your identity?
By quarter to ten, there were maybe 300 people at most. It was your general granola bar mix of nuts and flakes. If you can name a cause from the sixties, they were there. Environmental, Organization of Anarchists, big government haters. I felt like I was back at a Saturday afternoon in college.
This was a rite of passage, not protest or rally. These are the same people that show up any time a cause is in danger. The important thing is the protest itself.
People concerned about the cause would probably put more effort into the message than the props, and would show up here more than one day a year.
So what the fuck was MetroPDs problem. Fuck me if they were there to observe and ensure.
I was once assaulted by 5 guys 100 feet from my apartment. It was over an hour before I saw a single police officer, and then I had to prove to them I wasn’t the one doing the assault. But a bunch of high school radicals with cloth banners brought out one third of the metroPD.
Those cops that weren’t lineing every street and intersection for six blocks around the park, or sitting on one of at least a hundred motorcycles were sitting on Metro buses across the street from the park. Just sitting there.
Until 5 minutes before the rally started. At which point over 100 riot troops in full gear marched out and surrounded the entire area, three officers deep at some spots. And proceeded to constrict themselves into a smaller area every few minutes. Thirty seconds into the march, the cops started gathering up all the people sitting on the grass. shit or get off the pot, I guess. There was no option… if you were in the park, you were forced to march by big, ugly men in riot gear.
This is when I turned on my sorry ass and went the other direction. When cops start forcing people to join a protest, it will not be a good day for the protesters.
No doubt. I kept an eye on several other protests in the city that day. I wasn’t able to find that one again, after circling around a couple blocks.
That night of course, there were stories of how protesters marred a peaceful rally with violence.
Bull fucking shit. These people couldn’t do anything more violent than blow their nose. They didn’t even have ammonia soaked rags this year. I suppose they beat the shit out of an innocent bystander with the blue peace-symbol or the swan signs.
And this kid shivering on the sidewalk looks like a threat to a 6’5, 250 lb. cop in full riot gear.

Feeling good about being an American? Freedom and all that?
A little something for your paranoia: “Government seeks to extend reach of secretive court used on spies, terror”.